As of late, I’ve started to identify myself as more-or-less an ape: not only as a way to connect with my dreadful roots of evolution, but also as a way of coming to terms with the futility of human intellect. However, despite being so undeniably akin to the brutish and idiotic nature of apes (as I myself an a decendent of them), I used to faithfully convince myself that I was more akin to the exotic intellect of humans. Well, after running the numbers and doing the math, the latter has turned out to be an undeniable lie.

Before reconnecting with my unevolved cousins, I was your stereotypical “smart kid” who’s scored high marks in all of his many courses he’s taken throughout his educational career. In other words, I was so passionate for ‘learning’-- and I use this term loosely, that I drove myself to near insanity as a result. My friends, my family, my free time, my life -- none of these things were safe from my lust for knowledge: I sacrificed everything I loved just so I could possess more knowledge. Can you name any other animal so foolish enough to sacrifice its own kin and life just so it could know more about differential calculus? No, only foolish humans would do that!

However, humans don’t just stop there-- as I can attest to. I didn’t just take the most advanced courses I could find in mathematics; I took the most advanced courses I could find in any and all subjects. Last year alone, I enrolled in over 16 courses in an effort to obtain all the knowledge that was humanly possible to grasp in one year. However, in retrospect, I now see how foolish this all was. I mean, do you see me with a white collar shirt on, a black tie around my neck, and a career inventing new software for Google? No, you don’t! I live in a small, run-down, rural town in the middle-of-nowhere hicks town in Oregon. Unlike what you might’ve guessed, my town isn’t known for it’s cutting-edge technological innovations and advancements; we’re known for our backwardness and ignorance. Nonetheless, this doesn’t imply that I am somehow less intelligent than someone who does, indeed, work for Google, Apple, Samsung, et cetera.

It’s not about where you work, how much you know, or your IQ score. The real measure of intelligence is someone’s ability to stand out in their own field or aspect. I had to learn this reality the hard way, as I took so many courses in an effort to become smarter, but if anything, I only succeeded in driving myself further from who I really want to be: smart. You see, it’s simply not smart to over stress yourself and distance yourself from friends and family just so you can take more courses -- it’s dumb, foolish, and immature. All it shows is that you’re not smart, not wise, and not prepared for college or the future. Thus, my advice to anyone who has ever questioned their intelligence and felt a need to take a million courses to prove to themself that they aren’t stupid, is to just not do that. Don’t. You won’t gain anything from taking a million courses, except for a million tests, quizzes, assignments, and very large amounts of unnecessary stress. Instead, you should realize that you’re just an ape, and as such you cannot learn everything. Simply put. we’re not robots: we’re apes; we can’t learn everything that’s ever been discovered, and we can only strive to be the best in our field and try to be generally logical and forward-thinking.

Tiger teams rewrite history with two league titles, fix their eyes on 3A tournament berths

February 21, 2019 by Luke Roth Tiger Times Staff Writer for OSAAtoday

It has been a special season for basketball in Clatskanie.Not only did the girls team win its first league title since 1995, but the boys are league champions for the first time since 2007.It has set up a pair of high-stakes home games in the Columbia River town as both teams play for berths in their respective eight-team 3A tournaments.Clatskanie’s boys (14-7) will play their first home playoff game in 24 years when they meet No. 11 Burns (15-10) at 4:30 p.m. Friday. The fourth-seeded Clatskanie girls (17-4) play No. 13 Nyssa (12-12) at 2 p.m. Saturday.If Clatskanie wins both games, it will be the first time in school history that its boys and girls teams will be in the quarterfinals at the same time. The boys won the B title in 1945 and placed third in 1954 and fourth in 1984. The girls have never won a trophy.The girls team went 12-0 in the Coastal Range League, clinching the title with three games left. The Tigers’ league run included three wins against No. 7 seed Warrenton."We only returned two starters from last year’s state tournament team, so we know we had a lot of pieces to put in place,” said coach John Blodgett, who was voted the league’s coach of the year. “At our first practice we looked up at the league title banners and we all read ‘1974’ and ‘1995,’ our goal was set in that very moment. And it feels so great to achieve it.”The Tiger girls have been carried by two sophomores in 5-foot-9 post Shelby Blodgett, the Coastal Range player of the year, and guard Olivia Sprague, a first-team all-league pick.Blodgett has nine triple-doubles and is averaging 23.3 points, 17.3 rebounds, 7.6 steals, 3.3 assists and 1.4 blocks. Sprague is averaging 23.0 points, 5.2 rebounds, 5.1 steals and 4.4 assists."Our sophomore girls play above their years,” said John Blodgett, who starts four sophomores. “I believe we can get in to the elite eight, and I really love our chances from there.”The Clatskanie boys clinched the Coastal Range title after stifling Rainier 47-35 at home in the league finale Feb. 11. The Tigers finished tied with Rainier for first place at 10-2 but won the tiebreaker for the top seed by virtue of taking two of three games against the Columbians.Tigers coach Deshaun Combs, league co-coach of the year, said the season has been fun.“We won a lot of games, and the energy in the locker room always remained high,” Combs said. “We set out a goal at the start of the year to be league champions. The boys worked their butts of in practice and in the classroom, and it’s so exciting to see them achieve this.”The team is much improved from last season, when the Tigers finished tied for fourth place in the Lewis & Clark League and ended with a 14-11 record after losing in the league playoffs.Before every game, assistant coach Dwight Edwards went over a checklist of games remaining until Clatskanie clinched the league championship."It’s a great experience for all of us, and this is something most of the team have never been a part of,” said junior guard J’kari Combs, a second-team all-league pick. “We've been pushing ourselves so hard in practice and we don’t plan on our season ending on Friday night."